Forgot what happened yesterday. 😡
Played some Awesomenauts and MLP today. Attended ACM meeting. Finished FoE PH Chapter 48 again. Doodled some stuff but didn’t scan it. Wrote some stuff but didn’t post it. Tried to animate a thing, but it went poorly.
Currently hot in my room for unknown reasons. I might go play with the thermostat.
Today was PnP day. The bulk of my time went into that. I might talk more about it later.
PnP Pro: Quantified stats make for better consistant representation of character.
PnP Con: Players want to optimize the numbers, which means doing decision-making based on player wishes and the numbers rather than the character’s thinking.
[9:36:43 PM] Retl: So-so. Mostly fine. Had another day of multiple classes again after the impromptu ‘break’ from the freezeover. Classes went well, though my Robotics partner was nowhere to be found, so I had to solo some reconstruction and assembly. The programming bit was easy-peasy though. Arranged to meet up with my GamesII team on Fridays which keeps my Snr Software Engineering group meets on Saturdays and the PnP group meets on Wednesdays and… I still haven’t figured out what’s going on with Digital Multimedia. If that’s not a group project, that would simplify things a lot. And I probably need to pester someone for their copy of the textbook so I can photocopy a few chapters.
[…] And I also ended up half-way doing one of the 3D models for one of the group projects in the space of 6 minutes when the partner in charge of the graphical assets was ready to give up. It felt… awkward. 😡 But ultimately I’m glad that got the asset done up and almost ready to put right into the game. At least it got the mesh and whatnot there.
I also considered a backup plan for the case that I do not get into the ABCs of Fallout Equestria thingy. I could write the BBBs of Fallout Equestria. A bunch of short ramblings about topics that start with B. Like Balloon Like Bomb! Or Balefire! Or Balloon! Or Breech! Or Banner! Or Bullet! Or Blood! Or Banishment! Or Balloon!
More recently, I’m reminded that dealing with people can be rewarding- it’s tons of fun to hang out with like-minded people on a good day with some free time, and it’s kinda warming to see someone figure out a new trick or technique after a little bit of guidance. And other times, there isn’t much else in the world as bothersome as another person, Blah. I liked to think people like [a certain family member] were rare and just an odd matter of a circumstance in my life, but it seems like there’s plenty of others in the world just like them. And on top, their brashness tends to give them the scoring card in a confrontation and in leadership roles… but it also makes it that much harder for anyone to deal with them.
Played Awesomenauts for 3 hours.
These guys had a brutal setup. If you stepped past the turret anywhere near the Skolldir, he would toss directly into Yuri’s bomb-nest, pretty much getting an instant kill. This continued for quite a while until I finally got my knife and clone upgrades all bought up and attempted to stealth over the bombs, wait for a fresh clone, and then drop and use the clone to help soak damage from the turret to solo-push.
It worked out! Kinda. Was an interesting match, but probably would have been really boring to watch.
Project Horizons Reread Progress:
46 – Caper: Made a bit more progress into this one again. OMG BUBBLEBLOWER RAMPAGE. Also, given the fact that Rampage can infinitely regenerate and whatnot, she’d probably be a dreamgirl for popper-inflationists. Though she’d probably be none-too-fond of the experience herself. this one’s kinda fun. And the thing with the talking sneaky suit is cute, but I can’t remember if that’s this chapter or the next.
47 – Hightower: In which Blackjack becomes a part of Unity. AND gets fatally cursed by necromancy. (Notable plot point: Blackjack has been resistant to Enervation for a while now. So this curse clearly isn’t the cause of her resistance.) Also some more backstory via flashbacks that explains who Mister Shears really is and whatnot.
48 – Inferno: I somehow don’t have an MP3 of this one on my drive! Totally skipped it by accident! Oops! Gonna fix that tonight.
Pumped a few more hours into this vector wallpapery thingy. It’s taking way longer than my usual sketches and doesn’t look tons better? But it looks OK.
Played more Gameloft MLP. Got Github and Google+ Hangouts setup. Tweaked my Google Calendar. Updated weekly report for Games II. Listened to some more PH chapters, but I don’t remember which ones. I think I heard a chunk of FoEPH ch 52 at some point.
Thinking about trying to write a very short fic for the ABCs of FoE project if some of the existing authors keep lagging behind.
When I do make more time for fic, I’ll be making less time for pics or something I guess. And I’m about to go to bed in a bit but I might slap a last-minute doodle online.
0:55 <Retl|Zzz> ohshi I just had the stupidest panic moment
00:55 <Retl|Zzz> Where I was like ‘what day is it’
00:56 <Retl|Zzz> And then I look at my calendar and see it’s Tuesday and then I’m like OHSWEETCELESTIA I DIDN’T GO TO ANY OF MY TUESDAYCLASSES WTF
00:56 <Retl|Zzz> And then I realize ‘oh it’s past midnight’
Artstuffs: Guess who just figured out how to vector stuff?
THIS GUY! Through a bit of bouncing back and forth between GIMP’s path tools and playing around with Inkscape’s Pattern Along Path tools and other node-tweaking whatnot, I now know how to make vectors that look relatively close to the show? But it’s still not spot on. It’s most noticeable if you look at the inner-body tapers. Still. I’m glad to have finally figured out a way to make lineart that doesn’t look super janky and to have an idea of how to make very MLPFiM-esque art. On the other hoof, I do not like how many hours it takes to do. It’s not hard. Just. Time consuming. Someone if I’d make the extra step on to animating this stuff. The answer was: Possibly but it’s really unlikely. Given that this takes me about four times longer than my usual slapping color on a rough sketch on a single image, going from this to animation would be kinda nuts. And I didn’t build these to be flash-animation puppets. I could probably tweak and force them to be such with a lot more node-tweaking but they’re not designed for animation as is. (And trying too hard to MAKE it be a flash animation build is exactly why I kept struggling with vector art for so long.)
Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Reread Progress
40 – Recovery : Scotch is in a bad way… but P-21 gets a bit more fleshing-out, and it’s fun. Mainly, Blackjack finally realizing he’s been addicted due to lifelong exposure to Med-X, and Glory having understandable frustration with even his presence.
[Oops!] I fell asleep for a few chapters. Technically the chapter I mentioned above, I listened to yesterday. But I wasn’t in much of a rambling mood yesterday. And I’m not sure I care enough about this particular arc to go back to review these chapters right NOW.
43 – Lucidity : It’s the Happyhorn Gardens chapter! Both one of my favorite chapters in that it does the most exploration of the potential benefits of future tech in the Fallout Equestria Expanded Universe and one of my favorites in that it really lays down heavy what with the mindscrewery weirdness. I woke up about half-way into this one. Though, as much as I like it, it has a lot of very gruesome and uncomfortable content like rape and child murder. Ultimately though, the good makes the bad worth getting through.
44 – Mares and Stallions : This is another one of those chapters in which we get a glimpse into an alternate universe that could have been in the form of Blackjack’s Littlehorn Massacre Nightmare with her party as young ponies on their way to their new school…
This chapter is also the chapter Stygyus first shows up. And… really this chapter is a great deal about sex and sexuality. It doesn’t linger on it for the purpose of eroticism or ribaldry, but it’s a major theme in this chapter.
45 – Hightower : “Champion in Bed”. Also, Mister Shears first appears. B-Team regroups at Meatlocker and then they go into Hightower.
This is also the chapter where it’s revealed that Psalm murdered the now-grown-up Pokey Pierce and Pinkie Pie… a matter of moments before the bombs fell. So I guess either way they were set to die? But it still only cements my dislike of Psalm. I question why didn’t make me dislike [Spoiler]. By matter of course, it also gives a brief glimpse into both the organization of the Ministry of Morale and of the Ministry of Arcane Sciences right in the final minutes of their relevancy. I’d still like to see a fic that explores what those structures were all like before the war started peaking, but I guess it really might just be on me to write such a thing. After chatting with Kkat in the IRC though, seems like the MoM in particularly had a very very loose structure built around a fairly simple and straightforward mission statement. And that as things became more and more about weeding out insurrection and whatnot instead of making more fun, things became worse and more frantic and harmful.
46 – Casper: Man, Blackjack abuses ghoul mental deterioration a lot. And I feel kinda guilty when she does. But it works! Also
“Well, he’s probably not personally running it, and definitely not the whole M.o.M., but he totally has his hooves all over the law enforcement branch. I don’t think he cares about party reservations, balloon research, or theme parks, after all. But we totally know who assigns our Hearth’s Warming Eve bonuses, and you just don’t go behind Quartz’s back.”
I would be ALL OVER that balloon research. Also this conveniently gives me an excuse to blame someone other than Pinkie herself for things going sour with her her ministry. Yay. Heck, I could split the blame between Twist for passing on drugs and GB for changing at least one branch’s direction… On the other hoof if Twist didn’t do what she had, then the MoM would have been doomed by bomb attack right at the start… So… bittersweet? Eh. I blame GB.
–
Breaking down Project Horizons by Volume, Volume 1 seems to be the most about Security as an entity and our initial A-Team. I like that volume. Volume 2 has the whole Blood and Stars / Hoofington Rises thing going on. Seems to be less about individual level things and more about establishing and hinting at grand-scale plots. The dreams get more interesting and mysteries are getting setup, and it’s kinda cool but daunting. This is also were we start getting a bit more ‘gap-filling’ universe expansion with Blackjack getting involved with Watcher. Volume 3 seems to primary revolve around conspiracies and redefining Fallout: Equestria as a universe by making great use of knowledge of when and where the original story by Kkat- Fallout: Equestria- had left time gaps or explanation gaps and un-shown perspectives. Typically when people talk about PH playing too much with canon or why it’s so vital to FoE as a setting, it’s because of exactly this chunk section. The most obvious example: LittlePip’s memory gap is used right at the first chapter of this volume to give Blackjack and her A-Team an adventure with LittlePip and her team. And it fits. There’s nothing in the original story that would imply these events didn’t happen.
I haven’t recently reread Volumes 4 and volume 5 just started, but 4 seems to be mostly about escalation of power and scale, and Blackjack’s painful journey that shapes her into the so-called Maiden of the Stars. Some of the coolest action parts happen in this volume! Heck, even some parts of just plain genuine fun here and there. But by this point, it’s getting really REALLY hard to keep track of all the characters. And then Volume 5 starts off with an immediate and huge shift from everything we’ve seen before implying a breech of a point of no return. What this volume is meant to be is hard to guess from just the one chapter. But this will probably be the end volume.
Rambling and Other Stuffs:
I played lotsa videogames. Probably about 3 hours of Awesomenauts between today and yesterday. And I keep fitting in a few minutes of the MLP Gameloft game here and there, so I’ve probably played at least an hour of that total. The MLP game is kind of a dirty cash grab, but it’s not as brutal about it as some Piano apps I’ve seen or even compared to the same core team’s LPS game. It’s super cute and has a reasonable atmosphere though, so I keep coming back.
I was gonna ramble more about that, but then I ran out of steam. All you need to know is that Apple Bloom, Cheerilee, and Twilight Sparkle are all working on a carrot farm and Big McIntosh is cranking out lemons every three minutes.
eye maed vectorart.
sleepnao
Spent more time than I’d really like to admit playing the Gameloft MLP game for Android. It’s not a good game, but it is cute.
Really glad to see the shuttles and food places running again. I missed having real meals. Bought a few more snacks for the cabinets just in case of another shutdown or something though. Mostly Chex trailmix and honey-roasted planters peanuts.
Reread the first chapter of Fallout: Equestria – Wild Wasteland. Listened to the new Idle Thumbs podcast and the new Polaris Podcast. Chatted with some friends on Skype. Spent a lot of time on IRC (#FalloutEquestria on Canternet) as usual.
Did a few pencil and ink doodles. Haven’t scanned them yet. Got a teeny tiny bit more work done on a commission. Hopefully I can get back in the groove and actually finish some.
Spent a little bit of time thinking back on some discussion I had yesterday. Far as I’ve internalized it:
I don’t enjoy drawing and sketching illustrations. I enjoy the result. However, my illustrations and love of balloons make up the bulk of my web-presence. I am not known for my programming skills- partly because of the academic restrictions on what I can and can’t share and still be considered academically honest. So if I’m unhappy about being known for my drawing as an applicable skill, I should make my other skills more well known.
In theory, that translates into me maybe doing a few more programming experiments and tossing those online. Realistically, I might not even do that what with multiple group-projects.
While the excessive ‘omg you pressed a button, do you want to post about it on facebook’ in some games and things is really annoying, it’s still a really simple way to keep track of what was done in a way. If I had that kind of tracking done for me, but placed into a private log, that would be kinda nice.
Movie Night at Bubblegum started at 11PM and will probably last 1.5 – 2.5 hours. So now I’m watching that. And uh, I guess I’ll stop typing now. I’m also thinking maybe I’ll start taking snapshots of what I’m doing on my phone now and then and use those as images for dailies. Or maybe try out Instagram.
Ate lots of noodles. Feel awful.
Tried to do vector art again. It went horribly. Played Awesomenauts for hours.
Played Awesomenauts. Tried to color this thing which is gonna be an alt to http://retl.tumblr.com/day/2013/11/01 when I get done. Or combined with it.
First time walking around on a snowed-over landscape. It was far trickier and slipperier than it looks. Doesn’t feel as cold… at first. But it gets really unpleasant after > 2 minutes in the stuff. I probably should have took photos.
Played PnP today. Get Bonus punched a Boss Mantis with a paper on his hoof. The paper exploded into confetti. +500exp.
Started reading Fallout: Equestria – Taking Life by the Horns. I recommend it.
Had Beef Jerky again for my first time in a good while. It was tasty. Also have a sizable pack of ramen noodles for tomorrow and incase things ever freeze over again.
Noticed that an “RKEngine” was mentioned in the Gameloft MLP games’s credits. Far as I can tell the RKEngine was created for a game called Roketz which was abandoned. The portions of the engine which were created were wrapped over by other developers and used as a part of the core that makes the MLP game (and the LPS game) run. I don’t have the knowhow to unofficially port the game to Windows or Linux, or even parse the files for the game’s models and animations. (And I thought The MLP game was using some particularlly dirty freemium tactics to con players into feeling like they needed to pay to play the game, but LPS is much more blunt about it right out of the gate. SPEND YOUR BLING TO BUILD [product placement] SPEND YOUR BLING TO PUT A [product placement] IN YOUR [product placement]. BLOWDRY YOUR PET BY SPENDING BLING no we’re not going to confirm if you meant to spend bling you tapped it you clearly meant to spend it.) The MLP game is not a great game, but it is an OK one. Having a windows port would be nice, but I suspect the decision to keep it just on moble is specifically to make their freemium structure harder to circumvent. It’d be nice if it had a flat-fee alternate version though.
Bed.
Drew this thing on request. Saw my second in-person snowfall. Played a lot of Gameloft MLP. Read Fallout: Equestria – Better Days Chapter 13 “Hasty Actions”.